Making Sense
by NorthernTrash-x
Summary: Nnoitra/Nel. The line of her body was a taunt, the crest of her hair sickening. He hated her.


**Making Sense**

_Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend  
__We were all equal in the end  
_Pink Floyd

He didn't know how he had got here, but he knew that it wasn't right.

This was never right.

None of this could be anything but wrong, because there was no way that he could have debased himself to such a level, no way that he could have allowed this to happen. His self-control had never been his strong point, but there was no feasible explanation to why he would have let himself become embroiled into a situation such as this. How? He was meant to be strong, wasn't he?

He glanced to the side, but she was still there, the curved arch of her naked back lit by silvered light of the moon into an unearthly glow, and he knew that he had to leave when he had a sudden and terrible urge to rest his face against that soft curve, that he knew might fit his face just perfectly if he lay the right way…

No, time to leave.

But right now, right here… the darkness was permeated by the moonlight, which was flooding in from outside, and he could smell her all around him, that one thing that he could not escape, no matter how hard he might strive to get away, because even before tonight, even when she was nowhere near he was convinced that it lingered, perhaps in corridors that she had walked down, perhaps even on his own skin, like another layer of flesh that though he longed to peel off he could not, for he could not bring himself to face the pain, though normally he had no fear of pain. The door was close, unlocked, and yet he could not leave here: the shadows were dancing on the walls, making caricatures of the shape of their bodies, their abandoned clothing and their zanpakuto, which were leaning against the bed.

Santa Teresa looked like open jaws, waiting to swallow down her prey.

He could close his eyes to everything, he knew that, and pretend, but that would not stop it from being real, and the sad laughter of his zanpakuto in his head just reminded him of what he was doing, anyway. His own shadow was angular, jutting upwards from the bed like an off-balance pillar, like his own arousal was when she came to close too him, when she looked at him with that disgust bridled with need and even when she looked right past him, right though him, with un-tempered disregard. Those looks, those not-looks, all of which conspired against him to fill him with desperation and hatred and lust and so much anger it made him feel like he would explode.

The shadows made her hair look like the cresting and undulating waves of water in motion, tidal in a way that had no place in the vast stillness of Hueco Mundo, as if the sea had come to this barren land and had found them, washed them, bleached their filthy bones as white as the uniforms they wore, the hypocritical colour of innocence that showed up the blood more easily, in a grotesque display of power that he relished for its violence.

He hated her hair.

It lay fanned out around her head, somehow incredibly feminine. His own hair was long, as well, but hers held a voluptuousness that was almost obscene in its quantity and its sheer amount… he hated it, hated the way that it screamed that she was a woman without being affected in any way at all. He hated the smell of it, that clean, sickeningly wholesome smell that made his head stop making sense, that made him want to bury his face in it and never pull away.

He hated the colour of it, as well- the way that it looked like one set colour from a distance: Persian green, Ichimaru had laughingly heard it, one hand tangled in it with the assurance of authority that he possessed and a purpose that did not exist, making Nnoitra grind his teeth, for though women were common property, unimportant, he hated the bastard right then, for reasons that he could not explain, for being able to touch something that though he was sure that he did not _want_ to touch, he wanted to be allowed to do so anyway.

And it wasn't that one colour, anyway- not when you got close enough to tell.

It was thick, and it was heavy, and the darkest, most hidden parts of it were that earthy, hunter shade of green, like it someone had treaded into a little mud to dirty it. Those parts were the softest though, like great sheaves of treated silk that he let slip though his fingers without quite meaning to. Then there were colours that he sometimes found himself thinking of, in half-awake moments of fancy, as wild tones- sea greens and forest tones and shades like that that looked alive with colour, the sort of colour that you could imaging swallowing people whole, never to be seen again. The shades of emerald, the layer on the top, was laced with celadon green strands that caught the light and shone like the finest of silver threads, laced like an unintentional halo around her.

He looked down at that hair, and he hated himself, now, for lying next to her and knowing that though the urge to kill her had not abated, that he would not act on it, not here, not now.

He hated her more, though.

Beauty? Her beauty would never, could never last forever, he knew that as well as he knew he own name- if not by the withering of almost infinite time, then it would be taken from her by death or, perhaps better, taken from her with a blade, ruining her skin with scar tissue, with blood, with wounds impossible to heal without leaving behind the effects of brutal mutilation. _His_ mutilation, one day- the day when he would usurp her from her immoral position of authority, for what right did she, a mere woman, have to stand above him? No right, no right at all, and she should expect retribution for such a heinous act of self-importance.

Santa Teresa was laughing again, but he spat at her in his head. He had never understood why his zanpakuto was so _sad_ all the time, always in some conflicted sense of melancholy, always mourning something that was just beyond his understanding, just out of his sight. It was just another thing to hate in his own, fucked up world.

It looked down once more to her, and bit the inside of his mouth until it bled.

He leant close to her, his voice against her ear and his breath against her skin and his disgust and arousal thick in the choking of his voice.

"I… _hate_ you."

And if things had ever been different between them, he would have seen that her body was too tense for her to be asleep, but at that admission- that the balance had not changed between them, that things would not be expected to change, that she would not be expected to have altered feelings for him, the muscles in Nelliel's back relaxed, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief.

As long as he still hated her, then things still made sense.

If only a little bit.


End file.
